Carl Hiaasen – Double Whammy

“It was a spring-fashion shoot,” Lanie Gault prodded. “You acted like you’d rather be in Salvador.”

“I think I remember now,” Decker said. “On Sanibel Beach, right?”

Lanie nodded. She sat on the edge of the bed, looking relaxed. Strange motel room, strange man, but still relaxed. Decker was not nearly so comfortable.

“Must have been five, six years ago,” he said. Trying to be professional, trying not to look at her legs.

“You’ve put on some weight,” Lanie said. “It’s good weight, though, don’t worry.”

Decker turned on the television, looking for Letterman. He stopped flipping channels when he found one of those dreadful syndicated game shows. He sat down heavily and pretended to watch the tube.

“Do I look any different?” Lanie asked. She didn’t say it as if she were begging a compliment.

“You look great,” Decker said, turning from the TV.

“Believe it or not, I think I’ve still got the swimsuit I wore for the pictures.”

On this detail Decker’s memory was clear. Yellow one-piece thong, the kind that required some touch-up shaving.

Lanie said, “You screwed one of the other models, didn’t you?”

Decker sighed.

“She was talking about it on the drive back to Boca.”

“I hope she was kind,” Decker said. Diane was her name. A very nice lady. Hadn’t seemed like the magpie type, but here you had it. He’d kept a phone number, except now she was married to a large Puerto Rican police captain. Her number was filed under S, for suicide.

Lanie Gault kicked her sandals off and sat cross-legged on the bedspread. She wore a fruity-colored sleeveless top and white shorts. Her arms and legs, even the tops of her feet, were a golden tan. So were her neck and chest, the part Decker could see. He wondered about the rest, wondered if it was worth a try. Bad timing, he decided.

“Can we turn that shit down, please?” Lanie said. On the television a young couple from Napa had just won an Oldsmobile Cutlass, and the audience was going nuts.

Decker twisted down the volume.

She said, “Look, I’m sorry about this morning. I’d had a couple martinis to get me going.”

“Don’t blame you,” Decker said.

“I must have sounded like a coldhearted whore, which I’m not.”

Decker went along with it. “It was a tough funeral,” he said, “especially with the wife there.”

“You said it.”

“Before you tell me about Bobby,” Decker said, “I’d like to know how you knew about me. About why I was here.” He guessed it was her brother but he wanted to make sure.

“Dennis called me,” Lanie said.

“Why?”

“Because he knows I’ve got a personal interest. Or maybe he’s just feeling guilty about Bobby and wants me to know he’s not giving up on it.”

Or maybe he wants you to try me out, Decker thought.

Lanie said, “I met Bobby Clinch at a bass tournament in Dallas two summers ago. I was doing outdoor layouts for the Neiman-Marcus catalog—beach togs, picnic wear, stuff like that. Dennis happened to be in town for this big tournament, so I drove out to the reservoir one afternoon, just to say hi. Must have been sixty boats, a hundred guys, and they all looked exactly the same. They dressed alike, walked alike, talked alike, chewed tobacco alike. All dragging fish to be weighed. Afterward they gathered around this tall chalkboard to see who was ahead in the points. Christ, I thought I’d died and gone to redneck hell.”

“Then Bobby came along.”

“Right,” Lanie said. “He said hello, introduced himself. It sounds corny, but I could tell he was different from the others.”

“Corny” was not the word for how it sounded. Decker listened politely anyway. He figured there was a love scene coming.

Lanie said, “That night, while the rest of the guys were playing poker and getting bombed, he took me out on the reservoir in his boat, just the two of us. I’ll never forget, it was a crescent moon, not a cloud anywhere.” She laughed gently and her eyes dropped. “We wound up making it out on the water. In the bow of Bobby’s boat was this fancy pedestal seat that spun around… and that’s what we did. Lucky we didn’t capsize.”

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